North Adams Transcript

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

ADAMS --Last week, the Selectmen officially accepted the resignation of Town Administrator William Ketcham and appointed Selectman Donald Sommer as interim administrator. This week, Sommer went on a three-week vacation to Austria.

Selectman Chairman Joseph C. Solomon said he will be filling in for Sommer until he gets back.

"I'm going to be there for now," he said. "The other board members said they'll help out too. All of our department heads are capable people and can run things just fine. I can definitely find some time to spend down at town hall and be on call. I check my e-mail quite a bit every day anyway, so I'm reachable."

No one has commented on the reasons for Ketcham's departure or on whether he will be compensated for his time. Solomon said the Transcript's request for the records is being reviewed by Town Counsel Edmund St. John III.

"There's won't be designated office hours until Mr. Sommer gets back," Solomon said. "Everything will go through (Administrative Assistant) Haley (Meczywor) until then and she has several ways to contact me."

Unlike Sommer, who is retired, Solomon and the other board members have full-time jobs. Solomon said this was one of the reasons Sommer was selected to fill in for Ketcham despite having the trip already planned.

"The board thinks that Mr. Sommer can do a great job," he said. "Other than this, he certainly has the available time."

NORTH ADAMS -- The estimated $24.4 million reconstruction of the Hadley Overpass on Route 8 is set to begin within the next two weeks, but any physical repair work won't start until after the 53rd annual Fall Foliage Parade has made its way over the bridge on Oct. 5.

"The first work will begin with the parking lots at Western Gateway Heritage State Park," Mayor John Barrett III said Friday. "The survey crews are out on the bridge doing the preliminary work, but the first thing that will be done is the replacement of the parking places that will be lost while the construction crews are working under the bridge."

He said a grassy area adjacent to the parking lot near the Northern Berkshire Creative Arts and North Adams Museum of History and Science will be turned into parking spaces while the overpass is under construction -- three to four years, according to state officials.

"There's also a possibility that parking will be added in the grassy area near the north end of the park," Barrett said.

Klark Jessen, a spokesman for the state Executive Office of Transportation, said work on the parking lots should begin in two weeks. In the days after the parade, he said, stage-one work will begin on the bridge itself, and a meeting will be held on-site to review the construction work with contractor J.H. Maxymillian...

WILLIAMSTOWN -- A third breaking and entering at Hot Tomatoes Neopolitan Pizza in less than a week proved to be lucky for police and unlucky for an employee.

Christopher Plante, 19, of North Adams, was charged with breaking and entering in the nighttime with intent to commit a felony, larceny from a building and possession of a burglarious instrument by Williamstown Police after he was arrested early Tuesday morning.

Plante, an employee of Hot Tomatoes Pizza, was arraigned on the charges in Northern Berkshire District Court on Tuesday afternoon, and a pretrial hearing will be held on Oct. 28.

According to a news release from the Williamstown Police Department, Plante was seen in Hot Tomatoes Pizza at 12:09 a.m. by Officer Scott Skorupski who was on a routine patrol of Water Street...

Thursday, July 3, 2008

It's a slow process getting these up and moving — we still put out a daily newspaper after all — but we figure it's best to move with caution and take care as we craft these blogs. It'll all be great once the scaffolding has been pulled off the building.

So far we have four featured sites — this, the central North Adams Transcript blog, where we will post various items of the utmost importance; Casual Geekery, where managing editor Steve Ferrari and Adams reporter Ryan Hutton talk all things geek; Return of the Saturn, musings by head reporter Jennifer Huberdeau; and arts and entertainment editor John E. Mitchell's Reverse Direction, covering the arts in the Northern Berkshires and beyond.